October 27th, 2016:

The Connecticut Supreme Court is considering whether Connecticut’s environmental protection agency and state regulators were wrong for not studying the potential environmental impact of a major natural gas expansion plan before they approved it in 2013, according to a recent article in the Middletown Press.

The Connecticut Energy Marketers Association asserts that the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority violated the Connecticut Environmental Policy Act by approving the gas expansion plan without first performing an environmental impact evaluation, the article states. The plans call for making natural gas available to up to 300,000 additional homes by building about 900 more miles of gas mains over the next decade.

“The conversion process will have an unprecedented impact on the environment, principally by significantly increasing the amount of methane, a greenhouse gas, that is emitted each year by Connecticut’s gas companies,” lawyers for the association wrote in a brief to the Supreme Court.

The association says the state Environmental Policy Act requires an environmental impact evaluation any time a state agency proposes or initiates any activities that may adversely affect the environment. It’s seeking a court order stopping gas expansion projects until an environmental assessment is done, the article states.

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